Next-generation sequencing analysis for detecting human papillomavirus in oral verrucous carcinoma

Purpose The aetiology of oral verrucous carcinoma is unknown whilst human papillomavirus ‘involvement’ remains contentious. Dubiety can be attributed to varied detection procedures and difficulties in defining ‘gold-standard’ histological criteria for diagnosing ‘verrucous’ lesions. Their paucity also hampers investigation. Design We aimed to analyse oral verrucous lesions for HPV subtype genomes using ‘next generation sequencing’ for the detection of papilloma virus sequences, identifying subtypes and computing viral loads. We identified a total of 78 oral verrucous cases [62 carcinomas and 16 hyperplasias]. DNA was extracted from all and sequenced at a coverage between 2.5 and 13%. Findings An HPV-16 sequence was detected in one carcinoma and one hyperplasia, and an HPV-2 sequence was detected in one carcinoma out of the 78 cases, with viral loads of 2.24, 8.16 and 0.33 viral genomes per cell respectively. Practical implications Our results indicate no conclusive human papilloma virus involvement in oral verrucous carcinoma or hyperplasia.